A common wheel design has a well, which consists of a rim well and the wheel flanges. The wheel flanges circulate the rim well on both sides, overlap this rim well and offer the tire lateral support. The wheel spider or wheel disk is used for fastening the wheel. Thereby, a wheel spider has spokes or other connections from the rim to the hub, which is arranged in the center of the wheel. A wheel disk performs the same task without spokes, as an all-over connection of the rim to the hub.
It is a constant endeavor to reduce the weight of motor vehicles, especially of the unsprung masses, in the further development of automobile technology. The use of lightweight materials, especially of fiber composites, is offered for this.
There is already a number of approaches to contribute to weight reduction by means of substituting metal spokes with fiber composites. However, in these substitutions, stability requirements may not fade into the background.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,681,647 suggests connecting a metallic hub with a ring-shaped surrounding element. Thereby, the hub is wound around with long reinforcement fibers, which run between the hub and the outer ring, or the hub has pin-like elevations for this, around which the reinforcement fibers are placed and then led to the outer ring. The outer ring is itself wound around one or more times, whereupon the reinforcement fiber is led back to the hub. Another embodiment also provides on the outer ring pin-like elevations, which are correspondingly wound around. The long reinforcement fibers have a plastic impregnation and can be hardened after the completion of the winding between the hub and ring. They then form the spokes of the wheel. The drawback of this design is that the reinforcement fibers run unidirectionally between the hub and ring and have a low resistance to stresses parallel to the axial direction. The manufacturing process is complicated and time-consuming because of the complicated winding.
DE 10 2006 051 867 A1 discloses how a wheel spider consisting of a plurality of rings made of a fiber-reinforced material can be constructed. A plurality of rings made of reinforcement fibers are fitted into the space between the rim and the hub. The rings are not yet hardened and are deformed into arc-like shapes with round corners. The circular segment of the arc is positioned in an ideal shape at the inner surface of the rim, while the chords of the arcs are in contact with each other and form the spokes after consolidation. The arcs are connected in substance with each other or with the rim by means of matrix material. The drawback of this design is that the rings made of reinforcement fiber material are wound unidirectionally and hence have a low resistance to forces in the axial direction. In addition, the structure of the spokes only allows straight designs lying in the plane of the hub.